Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday December 27, 2013 @01:17PM
from the kicking-'em-when-they're-down dept.

An anonymous reader notes that Apple has renewed its patent attack against Samsung, asking U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh to prohibit Samsung from selling over 20 different phones and tablets. Apple made a similar request after it won a $1 billion judgment in 2012, but Koh did not allow it. An Appeals court later ruled that Apple could resubmit its request if it focused on the specific features at the center of the 2012 verdict, and that's what we're seeing today. Apple's filing said, "Samsung’s claim that it has discontinued selling the particular models found to infringe or design around Apple's patents in no way diminishes Apple’s need for injunctive relief. ... Because Samsung frequently brings new products to market, an injunction is important to providing Apple the relief it needs to combat any future infringement by Samsung through products not more than colorably different from those already found to infringe."

This is Slashdot! We don't care what any silly judge says, or what the law says! We'll voice support for what we want the law to be, specially tailored to our limited knowledge of this situation, based on our own prejudices for or against the companies in question.

Actually what I find more disturbing than a biased juror is how Obama permitted apple to sell its phones even though samsung won a ban legally, yet didn't grant the same favor to samsung in the exact same circumstances. That's pretty obvious favoritism, and unlike the biased juror, it's perfectly legal and not subject to appeal.

The reason was that Samsung's patents were standards essential FRAND, which means they agreed to allow them to be part of a standard in exchange for lesser royalties and harder to seek injunctions. Apple's patents were not FRAND.

Right, and Apple is infringing and not paying the licensing fees. So, why do they get a free pass? Their products should be banned just the same.

They don't get a free pass, just wait for the court to set a rate, and Apple will pay Samsung the amount that the court decides, including past damages. Part of the FRAND obligation is to make it difficult to ban products.

Apple's patents were bullshit to start with, and are continually being overturned at the patent office. Samsung shouldn't _have_ to work around them, and it's far from clear that Samsung even infringed in the first place - that trial was a fucking farce.

Samsung's patents may be FRAND but that doesn't mean that people should be able to use them without paying a fair or reasonable amount. Apple used them and refused to negotiate. Just what the fuck are Samsung meant to do in that circumstance? Ignore the patent?

Obama was playing petty protectionism and nothing else. Sure, Samsung may own half of Korean politics but that doesn't make Obama's corruption any less.

Yep yep, the article linked in the summary even states "Apple, which initiated the legal fight in 2011, had 13 percent market share in the third quarter of this year, while Samsung had 31 percent, according to IDC research."

Sounds like sour grapes to me.

I know I love my Galaxy S3 and have never had an iPhone due to not wanting to be locked to iTunes.

I'm actually surprised Apple is only going after them in the US, though the US is primarily the only place Apple is relevant, everywhere else it's pretty muc

Why would anyone buy an iPhone in the third quarter, when it was widely rumored Apple was set to introduce a new iPhone beginning of Q4? (in other words, the only meaning market share numbers for this industry are annualized.)

Software patents stifle innovation, because I go to all the trouble to create some new software from scratch, and then some greedy shyster walks up and demands I pay money to him. Even though he never created anything. He just patented a list of buzzwords describing some idea he claims to have had, but never implemented.

That's a nice theory. The reality is that the ten million or so vaguely worded and broad patents rubber-stamped by the patent office in return for fees serve to lock down almost all paths to innovative products.

You know what I find hilarious? How many foolishly believed they could fix a corrupt system by voting within that system. I told folks when the first "Obama Fever" spread through the land that he would be NO different than President Shrub or McSame and that his motto should really be "Yes We Can! (But I won't)" but did they listen?

Well I hope that all the bribery, kickbacks, NSA spying, curtailing of liberties, etc has taught you all a valuable lesson. The lesson is simple folks, you can't change a corrupt

This particular judge disallowed Samsung from showing the jury its prior art [arstechnica.net] (phones that it had in the design pipeline before the iPhone was announced) because the Samsung lawyers missed a filing deadline [arstechnica.com]. She let the letter of the law (a filing deadline) override the intent of the law (to get to the truth of the matter).

Apple's tablet infringement claims were thrown out because of the copious amounts of prior art which the jury saw. The $1 billion judgement likely would've been thrown out too if they'd seen Samsung was working on iPhone-like designs before anyone outside Apple even knew what an iPhone was. In this particular case, the prejudice is in the jury, not the general public which got to see the documents the judge disallowed because of a technicality.

Except there was no release, just a photoshopped image. None of those Samsung phones were on the market. Apple releases the iPhone and Samsung cries "no fair! We were thinking of making something like that someday!" and then it took Samsung 2 years to make a iPhone clone. [wikipedia.org]. No wonder apple sued them.

This "is a matter of law" only when law is on Apple's side. When Samsung got some of their devices blocked at ITC, they just came to Obama crying and Obama administration overturned ruling by decree. For me it's plain corruption, not a matter of law. Apple is a parasite who abuses laws when it suits them and using political connections to ignore laws when it works against them.

Perhaps not. But who gives a fuck if Samsung hides from taxes in Korea. The US is not in Korea last time I looked.But, your buddies at Apple hide out in Ireland and pay only a tiny percentage of taxes they otherwise would. Meanwhile, we are firing teachers left and right. We cannot afford to fix our roads and bridges. But no, lets help companies like Apple and GE make insane profits operating in our society, while they contribute almost nothing back to it.

Oh you mean like the ITC banned Apple products the president overturned it, stating that such bans should not happen, but then a similar Samsung ban happened and the president said nothing?Yeah, the legal system works a treat in the US. No protectionism there at all.1 billion for look and feel pattens. Things where were NEVER intended to be patented. Only in the USA.

Sometimes it's just a random evolutionary combination of features. Some mobile phones have a high performance GPU,others just offer basic graphics. Other have a stereoscopic cameras that can make 3D movies, others don't. Some have a super-large screen that just does basic 2D, others have the parallax view 3D screen. Others have a secondary camera. Then there's battery life, memory size, the shape and color of the case. Some colors go with certain applications and markets. Customers will view certain combina

All they did, a few versions ago, is allow developers to sign apps, and distribute through the app store - they have made ZERO moves since then towards a "mandatory" app store.

If you think allowing developers to sign applications and having the OS ask before running anything unsigned (note that does NOT mean from the app store) is bad then you have not seen the average person's computer.

and their totally over the top pricing.

You mean like pricing a Mac Pro $2k less than you can buy the individual parts for it?

I'm typing on mylast macbook air here ever... and it's a $1200 value that sold for $2200

And how much do you think a PC is worth after a year?

Good luck with the switch but the grass is pretty much DEAD on the other side of the lawn.

You mean like pricing a Mac Pro $2k less than you can buy the individual parts for it?

In the last 10 years that is the one example of decent pricing you can give for Apple. In just about every other case Apple's markup over the industry baseline has been about 100%. Asus has a $1000 premium laptop? Apple sells the exact same specs for $2000.

Sure. Except I don't want exactly the spec that Apple offer. They just can't offer me the PC I want. The closest they can get has a worse CPU, a worse graphics card, a monitor and keyboard I don't need (who the fuck buys a new monitor and keyboard every time they buy a PC), it lacks wifi, it has less storage (they can't even spec the storage I have in my desktop) and it costs Â£600 more.

That's Â£600 more today than I paid four fucking months ago. Prices have dropped since.

Cederic is a different poster than me, so using his post to infer things about my perspective is a bit problematic. Regarding how well Apple has served various markets, see my other post-- it has photo examples of the sorts of gouging they do / did.http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4603751&cid=45800583 [slashdot.org]

Its generally been like that for some time; the Apple margin has gotten better in some of the more competitive areas, but generally they have been insanely overpriced compared to what you get. And I really dont buy any nonsense

With a coupon, and no mention of the case. I'm assuming traditional shitty flimsy plastic HP design right? With the screws for the hinge assembly attached right into that soft, breakable plastic, yes? Oh, and a 1366x768 LCD. CPU very slightly better on the HP, RAM is better (2x as much), GPU pretty even (6750M vs 6770M).

I can see why it was cheaper.

I thought you said your Apple Challenge graphic was going to support your argument? All you've shown here is a crappy HP laptop that made sever

There was no coupon code. Those discounts are bog-standard; vendors mark up the "retail price" but discount it. This is a fairly well established retail trick; JC Penny famously attempted to buck that trend by simply setting the price at what it should be, and they paid the price for it.

Youre really not going to convince me that half the ram, $1000 more, a slower CPU, and a slower GPU are all OK because the case is made of aluminum and a very very slightly better screen (1440 by 900 vs 1368 by 768). (SOU [apple.com]

You claimed to have won an Apple Challenge and boldly claimed so because of the "better CPU, twice the RAM, better GPU" and very conspicuously left out the much worse screen and the classically poor HP laptop chassis (check around, there are decent PC laptop cases, but HP is very definitely not it).

Now you're claiming that the $1100 price, which is listed as "price after savings" on your own graphic is the real price of the laptop and that this standard across all laptop

So if I go to new egg right now I can expect a $500 discount on any laptop I choose? Sweet.

No, but if you go to Newegg youll see a watch listed as retailing for $900 with 92% off, going for $80; and suprisingly that same watch is available on amazon for around that price ($150 or so). And if you were to go to HP's website right now youd find all of their laptops seem to have 20% off until 1/4/2014-- i have new pics for you:https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B9qgiyz_vguVUXEza0hBai1SdWs&usp=sharing [google.com]

Its not a perfect match-- the HP Spectre handily beats the Air at $500 less, and while the H

Apple is a terrorist asking for the suspension of basic civil liberties just to suit their own bottom line. If there are other devices that "infringe on their rights", they need to go through the complete process to ban those. They should not get a free pass on due process. If they want to be anti-competitive jackasses, they need to follow the rule of law while doing it.

Apple did not invent what we now call the smartphone. The iPhone merely has the distinction of being the first really popular such device.

IBM came out with their touch-based "Simon" phone in 1993, which although it had a black-and-white screen and lacked multitouch capabilities, still had many of the features we associate with smartphones today. Users dialed with a onscreen keypad, and Simon included a calendar, address book, can be understood alarm clock, and e-mail functionality.

A Swedish company, Neonode, came out with a touch screen phone in 2003 (arguably unimaginatively named the N1m) that even utilized gestures, including the now very familiar "slide to unlock" functionality... which so many people associate with the iPhone these days (although in actuality, the intuitiveness of slide-to-unlock gesture is really quite obvious when you compare such an operation to that of sliding a deadbolt open).

But arguably neither of these phones looked a lot like the iPhone... But this in no small part because technology really needed to catch up to the concept. Nonetheless, if you look at pictures of either of those devices, especially in operation, you will probably recognize many familiar concepts which we now come to expect in a smartphone today.

Enter the LG Prada, in 2006, a fully multitouch smartphone unveiled not that long before Apple publicly unveiled the iPhone, and which looks so similar to the iPhone that LG actually accused Apple of copying *THEM* (although in actuality, their release dates were near enough to each other that it is unlikely that either had had any significant influence on the other).

So perhaps, instead of anyone copying anybody else, smartphones look and operate the way they do because it is a design that comes spontaneously from a combination of the evolution of technology, intuitive operation, and overall practicality... not, as you put it, imitation that is both "transparent and egregious"

Amusingly, TVs and laptops also very often look extremely similar, to the extent that you'd often be hard pressed to distinguish them if it weren't for the logo prominently displayed under the screen. And yet, only in smartphones do suits fly and lawyers make a ton of money, and most of the time a certain company is involved.

Yes, that's an excellent example. Thank you. Designs of an appliance converge on a particular one not necessarily out of any attempt to copy another particular one, but as a consequence of what is actually discovered to be genuinely practical in the real world, both functionally and cosmetically.

The reason they are similar is, as I said, a matter of what is intuitive operation, combined with the state of what is technologically possible to achieve at the time, and overall practicality. The fact that the first generation of Android phones looked more like blackberries while those that came later looked more like iphones is no more reason to suspect that they copied the iphone than the fact that Apple's device looked like LG's first such device was a reason to

So a company changed and adapted in the face of competition. I suppose you may say Windows 8 now copied Apple too i.e. they changed the direction of development?

Changing direction isn't anything special. It happens daily in the software world, both in user facing applications and in the back end. You want to talk about influence just look at how many "innovative" features of iOS came many years after Android.

Heck we're all so quick to forget that the first version of iOS didn't even allow copy-paste operati

They want an injunction to ban the devices the court found to be infringing. They could then use that to argue in a future case that new devices are essentially the same as the old devices (thus still infringing the same patents) and use that to support a new injunction banning the newer devices.

Since they seem to be able to have the President waive their own bans, I can't see why they wouldn't ask for pretty much anything that would make them happy. There's quite obviously some biased process in place.

If the current patent mess had been in place when cars were first industrialized, one automaker would have had the patent on the gas pedal, another on brake lights, another on the turn signal lever, and still another on windshield wipers. They could all either cross-license each other's "IP", or invent a totally different way to do trivially simple operations. The Apple (or Amazon) of the day would have been claiming rights to the concept of "internal combustion". Of course, cell-phones have to interoperate with towers and other infrastructure, so there's really only ONE way to do certain things...

If the current patent mess had been in place when cars were first industrialized

It was. George B. Selden is credited as being an early patent troll. He patented a version of the internal combustion engine, then went around demanding licensing fees from automobile manufacturers. It was eventually overturned, but was a early indicator of the problems in the patent system. Read more here: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/11/05/the-original-patent-troll.aspx [fool.com]

If the current patent mess had been in place when cars were first industrialised

It's been this way for a lot longer than that. Since the invention of the static steam engine, patents have been used like this. James Watt was a pretty egregious "patent abuser" back in the day, that ensured that his engines were the only engines that worked efficiently, brutally enforcing his patents on specific parts of the design to great effect.

If the current patent mess had been in place when cars were first industrialized, one automaker would have had the patent on the gas pedal, another on brake lights, another on the turn signal lever, and still another on windshield wipers.

The current patent mess was in place then, except there were a lot fewer inventors so a lot fewer patents. But when Ford started building the Model T, guess what happened? The other auto makers sued Ford for patent infringement, even though they infringed no patents!

Funny you mention that. The history of windshield wipers had multi-year patent disputes between inventors, copy cats, major car companies etc for every tiny change in design.

There was a patent dispute about the manual wipers in the 1900sThere was a patent dispute about split wipers for each windows in the 1910sThere was a patent dispute about automatic wipers in the 1920sThere was a patent dispute about intermittent wipers in the 1970s (they even made a movie about this one).

Poor Apple. They just can't compete in a market that doesn't care about status symbols as much as basic functionality. Their only recourse, rather than making better products, is to keep others from making them, thus forcing users to pay more for less. So much for that little company seeing themselves as heros fighting against Big Brother in television ads, you're just another bully fighting over the mass market carcass now. You've fallen so far you're making Samsung look like David.

not so anymore! The cheap iphone looks different from the regular, as does the super gold iphone. Apple realized that once their stuff was ubiquitous, it'd be harder to differentiate the haves from the have nots.
iphone c, and the gold iphone - problem solved

iPhones are ubiquitous. At a glance, people can't tell one from another, especially once they're in their protective case.

Most cases I've seen for those phones have special holes to show the precious fruit so that anyone may be in awe of the person holding it. Those fragile things obviously need to be protected from the real world but showing that partly-eaten apple seems to be more important than providing more complete protection...

That's what they were used to doing. Waiting for technology to advance in several generations in every aspect of computer technology, so they could combine them together and have a completely new, unique and distinctive product that no-one had seen before. Just about every creative person dreams of doing that. When it was Apple vs. Microsoft/Intel, they only had to worry about the OS and CPU, desktop cases were more or less the same; gray box under the monitor.or mini-tower unit.

If we had the same crazy patent environment when cars were being developed, every car would have a different way to control it. Patents should protect true invention for a relatively short period of time to allow the inventor to capitalize on his work. Now they are just barriers to keep the markets closed. Big companies cross license patents to keep their monopolies.

If we had the same crazy patent environment when cars were being developed, every car would have a different way to control it.

Early cars did have all sorts of control schemes. Some had steering tillers instead of wheels. There were throttle levers on the steering column on many vehicles. A Model T Ford has three pedals, two of which control the transmission. By the 1940s, things had settled down into something close to the current arrangement, but automatic transmission quadrants were not standardized until Congress stepped in. (GM had P-N-D-S-L-R, Ford and Chrysler had P-R-N-D-S-L). Standardization occured long after any relevant

A lot of these devices are older and not even sold anymore. There are also a lot already on the street. If Apple really wants these evil patent infringing devices off of the street, then they should offer an official free trade in program. Perhaps at least people with the older phones would take advantage, and then only if it doesn't reset their upgrade cycle.

How about Apple just cut their stock price in half right now and skip the whole legal battle. Then they can focus on shooting themselves in the foot, making their products worse, and pissing off their customers.

Do the world some good, next time, target the U.S. Patent Office, Mosanto, and the Federal Reserve.

It'll be extremely awkward, we'll find it so hard to hate you. It'll be like the time the KKK counter-protested Westboro Baptists leaving us all going WTF, how did we wind up on the same side of the line as those !@#$s

The Judge should rule, not only against Samsung, but every other device manufacturer. The end result, since all fucking phones are squar'ish. All smartphones by all manufacturers will be banned. Apple will be the sole seller of smartphones in the U.S.

Then, we turn around, sued Apple for a monopoly and break it into 20 separate companies that will spend the next 50 years reunifying.

I suspect most of these bans will be put in place. The hammer has started coming down on foreign tech, because U.S gov wants that flow of money into its own economy. U.S gov will leverage its power for the wider adoption of U.S based products and services both inside and outside of the U.S. The goal is to control and own as much of the global money flow as possible.
The trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific "partnerships" only aim to increase the strength and market share of U.S based companies, services and pr

Apple invests a few bucks in some lawyers and government lobbyists and in return they get an army of police to do their dirty work at a fraction of the cost. If Apple had to hire it's own police and equip them with guns to enforce such ridiculous demands, their products would be twice as expensive and no one would buy them. The government is a weapon with a great bang for the buck.

The best way to fight a corporation is with another corporation. Letting your enemies fight amongst themselves until they're bot

I think you're misunderstanding why this is done this way.You have multiple devices partly due to having multiple, mutually exclusive carriers.

In addition, you may have a couple tiers of products, as not everyone is going to go for the Uber-'spensive top end device.

Their approach allows them to hit multiple carriers at multiple price points.

On top of that, having multiple offerings means they have a better chance of finding the devices people want and then slimming down their offering portfolio later, as they refine the devices that people are buying and abandon the ones that don't sell and finding a way to roll any possible unique/desirable features down into other devices.

Apple gets away with "You will fit your lifestyle to what we offer you. And LIKE IT!". They get away with it because they're Apple and people know that they're expected to put up with Apple's crazy bullshit for "teh schmexy".

For people who refuse to be cookie cutter'ed (see "sane people"), there's a plethora of choices and you can pick the one that intersects someplace acceptable along your "needs" and "budget limits" lines.

apple doesn't force people to buy their products any less than samsung does.

No, but it would dearly love to. If Apple could use "I desperately want _(some-non-negotiable-feature)_" as a way to force Android users to grudgingly surrender themselves into the soul-crushing (if tastefully-appointed) captivity of Apple's walled garden, it would do it in a heartbeat. Apple and Microsoft would dearly love to close "the Android Hole" that empowers users to run whatever they fucking feel like running, instead of limiting their software to apps that are neatly aligned with the priorities and